


Always Good at Bad Ideas

by electricshoebox



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon hunting, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 10:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3484259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricshoebox/pseuds/electricshoebox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dragon fight leaves Bull gravely injured, and Dorian feeling frantic and vulnerable enough to blurt out the one thing he wanted to keep hidden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always Good at Bad Ideas

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Adoribull friends on twitter for feeding my addiction. I thought this up on a sleepless night, and it's mostly an excuse to throw all my favorite tropes into one utter sap fest. I'm still trying to get back into the swing of writing, so I apologize if it's disjointed. Constructive criticism is more than welcome. 
> 
> The title is modified from lyrics from "New Ceremony" by Dry the River.

If Dorian never again found himself knee-deep in an Orlesian marsh barely ducking an angry dragon’s flames in time to keep his hair from singing, it would be too soon. All Adaar’s rambling platitudes about protecting people sounded very hollow when Dorian was staring down a fire-spitting lizard the size of a small country. He cursed loudly as the dragon’s wing whipped over his head, and he lunged to fire a bolt of lighting along the beast’s side in retaliation. The dragon’s head snapped toward him. He scrambled backward, but then the Bull leaped in front of him, sinking his axe deep into its leg. The dragon roared in pain, snapping its jaw at Bull, who leaped back out of reach. The dragon turned and, with another great beat of its wings, it knocked both Bull and Dorian backward as it launched itself into the air. A few of Sera’s arrows followed, though they dropped short as the dragon surged up into the sky.

Dorian groaned, pain spreading across his back. Dragon hunting, Dorian decided, was for the birds. Or the Bulls, as it were. As he tried to push himself up, Bull’s hand appeared in front of his face. He glared up at the Qunari, but finally relented.

Bull was laughing (the bastard). “Did you _see_ those wings? It’s glorious!”

“I’ve seen all I ever want to see of them,” Dorian said, rubbing his back and wincing as he hit a sore spot. How anyone could be laughing while covered in that many scratches, Dorian couldn’t begin to fathom.

“It’s coming back!” the Inquisitor yelled from across the rocks, the metal casings around his horns glinting in the sun. “We’ve got it this time. Dorian, Sera, get the high ground! Bull and I will keep it busy.”

Sera was clambering up a nearby boulder almost before Adaar finished speaking. Dorian struggled up after her with another groan. Maker take the Inquisitor and his bewildering need to save the blighted world from dragons, and--

The beast soared into view above them, landing hard enough to shake the ground. Dorian pelted her with lightning, watching with satisfaction as the electricity crackled across her scales. He heard Bull’s laugh ring out over the dragon’s cry, and glanced at him in time to catch the grin Bull flashed him before turning to heave his axe into the beast’s jaw. Dorian grit his teeth to smother the answering (stupidly besotted) smile tugging at his lips and sent a fireball straight toward a gaping wound in the dragon’s leg.

The beast was tired, its great head lolling as blood poured from its pierced scales. Bull rounded toward the head, calling to Sera and waving his hand. Sera nodded, raising her bow and firing one keen shot straight between the dragon’s eyes, stunning it long enough for Bull to leap onto its nose. He sank his axe deep into her head, shouting in triumph. Adaar and Sera cheered, but Dorian saw the beast twitch. A protest was on his lips, his hand half-raised, but before he could even open his mouth to shout, the dragon gave one last violent snap of its head. The movement launched Bull across the marsh like a rag doll and sent him careening into several large boulders before he slid down, crashing awkwardly onto his side.

Dorian leapt from the rock and tore across the water before the others could even move. His heart thudded wildly in his chest. _Wake up. Wake up, damn you._

Reeds lashed at his legs, tugging at him and forcing him into the mud, but he scrambled forward. He pushed at them until he lost his patience and sent a burst of fire across the rest of them, burning them out of his way. Finally he reached the rock Bull landed on and dashed across it, collapsing on his knees next to him.

“Bull!” he cried, shaking his arm. “ _Bull!_ ”

One long moment passed in silence, and Dorian couldn’t breathe.

“Bull,” he rasped, shaking the Qunari’s arm again, “Don’t do this to me, don’t you fucking--”

A loud groan left Bull’s lips. His eye blinked open, unfocused, and he rolled slowly onto his back. The arm he landed on was bent at a wretched angle, but he was breathing, Maker, he was _breathing_. Dorian slowly released Bull’s arm, drawing in a breath of his own.

“Oh, thank the Maker.”

Dorian jumped. He hadn’t even heard Adaar and Sera reach them, but Adaar was bending over his shoulder to get a better look at Bull, and Sera was hovering near his feet. Bull groaned again and tried to sit up, but barely managed to lift his head off of the ground before growling something loud and angry in Qunlat and dropping it again. Dorian shook the shock from his limbs and reached for Bull’s shoulders.

“Don’t move, you imbecile,” he said.

Bull blinked up at him, dazed. “Did...we win?”

“ _Vishante kaffas_ , is that all you care about?” Dorian said. “Yes, you killed the damn thing, now hold still before you break something else.”

Dorian cursed how little healing magic had been in his studies. He wracked his memory for the right spell for bones as he let his hand hover over the broken arm. He tried frantically to summon the page of the dusty old tome he remembered on Alexius’s desk, something about--

“Shite, lookit ‘is arm!” Sera exclaimed, straining to get a closer look.

Dorian huffed in annoyance. “Yes, yes, now I’ll thank you all to keep quiet and let me bloody concentrate.”

A glow enveloped his fingers as Sera muttered something about “ooh, _touchy_ ” that he very valiantly ignored. He trailed his hand down Bull’s arm, and Bull grunted and winced, his nose twitching.

“I’m no healer,” said Dorian, watching his fingers, “but this ought to do...something.”

“Oh, it’s doing something,” Bull said with another wince.

Dorian spared him a glare. “Keep that up and I’m leaving you here. Ungrateful oaf.”

After a few more minutes, Dorian sat back on his haunches. Bull’s arm lay straight along the rock, though with bruises blossoming over the skin.

Adaar was glancing over his shoulder. “That’ll have to do. We need to get him moving before the gurguts figure out the dragon is dead. Can you stand, Bull?”

“Yeah, Boss,” Bull grunted, starting to push up on his good arm.

“Wait, give me a dagger,” Dorian said, waving a hand at the Inquisitor. Adaar raised an eyebrow but reached over his shoulder. Dorian grabbed the blade and reached for the swathe of silk hanging across the front of his leather armor. Hesitating only a moment, he hacked through the material, cutting a long, wide strip.

“Kinky,” giggled Sera, then “ _Ow!_ ” as Dorian heard Adaar flick the back of her head. Bull, however, was watching him intently. Dorian leaned over him, slipping the cloth around Bull’s neck and then carefully lifting it under his arm, tying it in place. When he sat back again, Bull’s lips twitched into a small smile that immediately made Dorian’s cheeks heat, and he coughed into his hand to hide it.

“That’ll keep you from jostling it,” he said into his fingers, turning away quickly. Bull slowly pushed up on his good arm, and Adaar stepped forward to steady him. Dorian hovered at Bull’s right side, with Sera in the lead to watch for gurguts.

“Oi, Bull, you shoulda seen the way the dragon went down though,” Sera said, waving her arms in front of her. “BOOM! _Splaaaash._ ”

“Yeah?” Bull chuckled, sounding more winded than Dorian had ever heard him. Dorian tensed next to him, anxiously curling and uncurling his fingers until he felt a light brush against them. Bull wrapped one finger around two of his and squeezed. Dorian glanced up, but Bull was still watching Sera pantomime the dragon collapsing on the ground, laughing as she leaped into a puddle ahead of them. Dorian let out a heavy breath, but didn’t pull away.

 

 

* * *

 

One long and muddy trek later, Bull lay on a meager pile of blankets in their shared tent, his injured arm still cradled in the makeshift sling and laying across his chest. Dorian knelt next to him, soaking a handkerchief in water from his canteen and carefully cleaning the blood and muck from where the dragon’s claws had grazed Bull’s side. Proper healers were still a good several hours’ march across the Plains, and wouldn’t reach the camp before nightfall.

“Leave it to you to get injured as far away from help and clean water as possible,” Dorian grumbled.

“I had help,” said Bull, cracking his eye open. “My arm’s back in one piece, thanks to you.”

Dorian snorted dismissively. “It’s a wonder you didn’t break all the rest of your bones while you were at it.”

“I’ll tell the next dragon to go easy on me.”

“The _next_ …?” Dorian sat back, gritting his teeth. “ _Kaffas_ , the _next_ dragon might actually kill you!”

“I can take a few hard knocks, Dorian. I’m built for it, as you seem fond of pointing out,” said Bull.

“Pointing it out was not an invitation to test it!” Dorian snapped, flinging the handkerchief on to his own bedroll to keep from throwing it at Bull’s face. He glared down at the Qunari as he felt the back of his neck go hot. “You’re not invincible, Bull! One day there’s going to be a hit you can’t take from a beast you can’t conquer, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch the man I love get eaten by a fucking dragon!”

For several long seconds, there was only the sound of Dorian’s breathing catching up with his rage. He was glaring at Bull, but Bull's face had softened, and he was looking like-- realization dawned, and a horrible seasick feeling suddenly wrenched through Dorian's stomach. He buried his face in his hands and hissed a long stream of Tevene curses into his palms. The perfect end to a perfect day, really.

Finally, muffled by his hands, he choked out, “Please, just… just forget I said anything. I should--”

But before he could make an artless scramble for the tent flap, he felt Bull’s hand close around his wrist and tug it down.

“Hey,” Bull said softly. “Look at me.”

Dorian let his hands fall but avoided Bull’s gaze. He could feel the flush on his cheeks.

“Dorian.”

The mage drew one long, slow breath before finally dragging his eyes back to Bull. He regretted it immediately. Bull was wearing that small, warm little smile that only hours of thoroughly debauched sex ever seemed to draw out of him. The one that Dorian loved and hated for making him feel cornered but soothed, caught but safe all at once. The smile that made him want to believe dangerous things, things like the whole world wasn’t about to come crashing down on his head. Again.

“Fine,” Dorian said, biting back a plea for him to look somewhere else. “I’m looking. Happy?”

Bull’s smile widened. “ _Yes_.”

Dorian swallowed hard, his heart thumping in his ears. He let Bull move his hand to tangle their fingers together. Dorian squeezed his eyes shut and tightened his fingers around Bull’s.

“I swear to everything that is sacred, Bull, if you go getting yourself killed chasing another bloody dragon after this--”

“Dorian.”

“No, listen to me, damn it, I had to watch you _fall_. Fall and stop _moving_. And if I ever have to do that again just because you get off on those wretched beasts--”

“ _Dorian_.”

“And if you think for one second I’ll be ripping another robe to pieces for you, you can just--”

With surprising dexterity for a man covered in claw wounds, Bull yanked Dorian down by their joined hands and caught him in a searing kiss. Dorian grunted into Bull’s mouth, fumbling to keep from falling on Bull’s injured arm. Bull pulled his good hand free to press it along the back of Dorian’s neck as he licked into the mage’s mouth. Dorian shuddered, his hand gripping blindly at Bull’s shoulder as he fell into the kiss eagerly, desperately.

When Bull finally pulled back to grin at him, Dorian huffed a laugh, slowly shaking his head.

“You always surprise me. I ought to be used to it now, I suppose, but here we are,” he said.

Bull tilted his head slightly, eyeing Dorian for a moment. “You expected something different.”

It wasn’t a judgement, but it wasn’t a question, either. Dorian thought, not for the first time, that Bull saw entirely too much for a man with only one eye. He straightened himself to sit back on his knees again.

“This hasn’t exactly been a sweets and roses romance,” said Dorian with a wry chuckle. “Not that I’m complaining, mind, but we both walked into this looking to… I don’t know. Blow off steam? Scratch an itch? And here I am breaking all those rules that you’re so fond of.”

Bull furrowed his eyebrows. “I told you from the beginning, it can be whatever you want it to be.”

“But what about you?” Dorian said before he could stop himself. “What do you want?”

“You,” Bull said easily.

Dorian swallowed. “You have me, clearly, but in what way?”

Bull scrubbed his good hand over his face. Then he turned, propping himself up on his elbow. “This isn’t… exactly familiar territory.”

“For either of us,” agreed Dorian.

“Love… love isn’t part of the equation for Qunari. It’s not a factor.”

“Ah,” Dorian said, feeling his stomach twist again in spite of himself. Well, that was that. It was fun while it lasted. He knew it would come to this, it always did, and he had lived through enough beginnings and ends that one more wouldn’t kill him. Though the embarrassment just might. Dorian started to turn for the tent flap.

“But I know this,” said Bull, and Dorian froze. “I know that I like making you smile, and making you laugh is better. I know that you look damn sexy when you fight, when you’re moving like you’re dancing with all that magical crap around you, but you’re even sexier tangled up in my bedsheets. I know I don’t want to stop waking up next to you, because how bad can a day be when it starts off with you smirking at me with your hair all ruffled and with that… _thing_ your voice does. And I know that you’re the first person who’s made me want to spend hours sitting on my ass in a library.”

Dorian managed a shaky laugh. “You’d be bored out of your mind.”

“I’d have a good view,” Bull smiled, but then it faded. “But more than all that… I know that I want to make you believe you really are as strong as you pretend to feel, and that I want to be there when you finally do, because you’re going to be unstoppable. I know that you’ve had more than your fair share of shit in your life and that no matter how much you primp and prance, you do need someone to show you some good, and I want to be the one to do it. If I tell you that you deserve that, you’re going to argue with me, but you _do_.”

Dorian was trembling. “And what… what do you get out of all of that?”

“You,” Bull said again, and curse him for making it sound so obvious. “Dorian, I don’t know if I know what love is. I don’t know if it’s… feelings and flowers crap, books and poetry, if it’s that candle Adaar dragged us across the Hinterlands to find for Cassandra,”--that got a laugh out of the mage--“But I do know what I feel about you. What I want.” Bull sat up so he could press his hand to Dorian’s cheek, his long fingers curling behind Dorian’s head. “I. Want. _You_.”

Dorian didn’t realize a tear had slipped down his cheek until Bull’s thumb was wiping it away.

“You… bastard,” Dorian said weakly, and Bull chuckled, letting his thumb trail along the close-shaved hair behind Dorian’s ear.

“So… that work for you?” Bull said, giving him a small, lopsided grin.

Dorian stared at him for a moment. There was an unreasonably loud part of him insisting that Bull was lying, that this would end the way everything else ended, broken by impossibility. But then, if he was lying, he’d certainly made sure to make everyone believe it, practically shouting from the rooftop that they were lovers at every available opportunity. As aggravating as that was, it gave Dorian no room to question him. Certainly not when he was looking at Dorian… like _that_ , with that damnable, genuine smile on his scarred lips. Dorian crawled closer, curling a hand under one of Bull’s horns. Maybe, just maybe, he could let himself believe it. Pulling gently, Dorian met that smile with a hungry kiss.

“I suppose that will do,” Dorian said once they pulled away, both panting and flushed. Bull just smiled wider and leaned in again.

“But I still… expect full… compensation… for that robe,” Dorian said between kisses, shivering when Bull ventured lower, to nip at his jaw.

“I’m sure I’ll think of something,” he said against Dorian’s skin.


End file.
